How to eat a dead terrorist
As a person who benefits from the Pax Americana (by which I mean the tacit agreement that most of the nasty is confined to countries full of brown people with names that end in -stan) I found this a rather interesting article.
I was a bit shocked at how the assassination of a suspect by government forces on foreign ground was not shrugged off, but blatantly publicized and celebrated. Perhaps I am too naive, embroiled as I am in the myriad daily worries about kids, my business, my dayjob and the delightfully rustic politics of Ireland, but I really had no idea things had gotten this far. I expected at least some foot-shuffling, some emming and ah-ing, some pretense at close collaboration with Pakistan.
There was nothing.
It is chilling to see that we are slowly inching closer to that cyberpunk dystopian image of a huge populace, made biddeable by cheap TV and half-oblivious, half-accepting to the brutality of the system they live in. A populace that just doesn't believe in better anymore and opts for easier in stead.
But perhaps it was never really that much different, and what we are really seeing is the last dying gasp of the naive optimism that came about after world war 1, when we all thought we would get together and make damn sure this would never happen again. Well, to white people anyway.